


Masters of the beans (we could call it even)

by smol_fangirl



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, It wouldn't be written by me if I didn't make at least one Taylor Swift reference, JATP Secret Santa 2020, Luke realizes what romantic attraction feels like and he is NOT amused, greyromantic Luke Patterson, transgender Nick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:48:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28300395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smol_fangirl/pseuds/smol_fangirl
Summary: It's only when they have to perform together that they realize they might not hate each other's guts.As he wipes the counter, Luke twirls around and sends half of the crumbs flying towards the floor. He keeps dancing. In hindsight, that frat boy doesn’t seem so bad now, Julie thinks. He might’ve not taken the job seriously either, but at least he never used a paper straw as a microphone or thought he could win her over with a wink and yet another toothy grin.No, she definitely hates Luke. And nothing could change her mind about that.
Relationships: Julie Molina & Nick, Julie Molina/Luke Patterson
Comments: 31
Kudos: 197
Collections: jatpdaily secret santa 2020





	Masters of the beans (we could call it even)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dr_Rigatoni](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dr_Rigatoni/gifts).



> Merry Christmas and a happy end of the year!  
> This was written as a gift for [dr-rigatoni](https://dr-rigatoni.tumblr.com/) as part of the JatP Secret Santa event hosted by [jatpdaily](https://jatpdaily.tumblr.com/).  
> The "we could call it even" in the title is taken from "tis the damn season" by Taylor Swift.

**Late August **

The new hire starts during Julie’s shift today. She absolutely doesn’t want to meet the new hire today. All she wants is to go home, hide under her blankets and cry with the photograph of her mom pressed to her chest.

There’s nothing she can do about the shift schedule, though, so when Ms. Lessa tells her about Luke, Julie just nods and smiles and nods some more. In a quick glimpse to the ceiling, she prays he’s not a lazy frat boy like her former colleague, or worse, another work crush like Nick is. Used to be. Still is. Or was?

Julie blinks the thought away. She slept too little to deal with these feelings right now on top of the unforgiving morning rush and the inevitable milk shortage till the delivery comes in.

And definitely too little to deal with the way too good-looking guy who just greets Ms. Lessa with a handshake and the stupidest perfect smile she’s ever seen.

An hour into Luke’s shift, Julie decides that she hates him for mainly two reasons.

First of all, he laughed at hug in a cup. None of her colleagues ever laughed at hug in a cup. It’s the café’s best-selling drink, a hot chocolate with a hint of white chocolate, topped with whipped cream, sprinkles and tiny marshmallows. The name came to Julie a few weeks after her mom died, when it felt like exactly that, and soon even the regulars picked it up. Those hugs in a cup helped her through the worst time of her life, but he laughs at it like he’s listening to a rambling toddler.

That alone deserves no mercy.

It’s not enough, though, not for Luke. “This is too quiet,” he announces with a headshake before he marches over to the radio. In a second, a Halsey song blasts through the café – Julie almost drops the steaming coffee cup she’s holding out for a customer. Either Luke doesn’t see her warning glare, or he ignores it.

And then he starts singing along. Loudly.

Taking a deep breath, Julie whispers to herself that she can go home in three hours. Three hours till Flynn and ice cream and slipping into her mom’s favorite sweater. She can make it. _Three hours_.

As he wipes the counter, Luke twirls around and sends half of the crumbs flying towards the floor. He keeps dancing. In hindsight, that frat boy doesn’t seem so bad now, Julie thinks. He might’ve not taken the job seriously either, but at least he never used a paper straw as a microphone or thought he could win her over with a wink and yet another toothy grin.

No, she definitely hates Luke. And nothing could change her mind about that.

**September**

When Luke walks out of his room, backpack slung over one shoulder, Reggie lounges on their worn out couch, tearing his gaze away from yet another baking book from the library.

“Who’s in today?” he asks with the sweet smile that’s always plastered on his lips.

“Julie,” Luke groans as he shuffles into the kitchen to grab his sandwich from the fridge. “I can already hear her telling me to turn the radio down like every three minutes. And I think Carrie comes in for the afternoon rush.”

Reggie chuckles, eyes still stuck on him. “To be fair, I can’t blame her if you turn it half as loud as your music here. I could sing along to your playlist under the shower today. Would it kill you to listen to something other than the new 5SOS album?”

“Hey, you’re supposed to be on my side here, Reg! Music makes me happy, and when I’m happy, our customers are too.” Passing the couch, he bumps his fist slightly against his best friend’s shoulder. Reggie dares to laugh at him. Still shaking his head, Luke drops his backpack next to the wardrobe and wiggles into his vans.

“I like Julie,” Reggie replies, “She always adds two extra marshmallows to my hug in a cup. You never do that.”

Luke rolls his eyes. “Yeah, because I don’t want Lessa to catch me disobeying guidelines and ruin my chance at three master of the beans titles. You know we could use that bonus pay for the new band merch.”

One glance back to the couch, and he discovers a pout on Reggie’s face. “You could at least call it hug in a cup when I order it.”

“I do!” Luke protests, his finger now tapping an impatient beat on the aro flag pin on his backpack. “Just not when she’s around,” he adds, which earns him a raised eyebrow. He knows it’s a little weird. And immature. But he doesn’t want to talk, hell, even think about it, not when the sharpness in her voice on his first shift still rings in his ears as she decided to ruin his first workday. So before he lets it slip that he loves that phrase just as much as Reggie, he shouts a goodbye to his little family and hurries through the door.

That shift, as if to spite him, a lot of people order a hug in a cup.

To spite Julie, he calls it “normal hot chocolate” loud enough for her to hear. When her eyebrows twitch in the subtlest motion, he thinks about the frown on her face on that first day, and her nose crunch, and the hint of a smile when she glanced at her phone in between breaks. Without his permission, a picture of Reggie by the counter flashes through his mind next, loopy grin on his face as Julie hands him a white mug.

Luke shakes his head. That combination is just too… something. Too much, he guesses.

**December**

The thing about Julie is that he doesn’t really understand why she gives him a frown or the cold shoulder most of the time. He tried to be nice to her, to make a good first impression – it’s not his fault that she didn’t appreciate any of it. When Ms. Lessa showed him around, he handed her the spare napkins from the top of the shelf she grasped for mid-jump. Julie barely grumbled a thank you. During the early afternoon drought, he turned the radio louder so they could clean along to the reassuring beats of the pop-rock radio station, and yeah, maybe he gave her a free preview for a Sunset Curve performance and maybe that’s not what he was getting paid for.

But she didn’t have to _snap_ at him about it.

Once or twice, when she gives him the same fake smile that’s usually reserved for rude customers, he wonders if it’s because of hug in a cup. If she noticed the slight chuckle at what he quickly learns was her own invention. But how could he not chuckle? It was cute how quickly she corrected him before the word chocolate even left the tip of his tongue behind. Very cute. Borderline adorable, even – like an angry kitten.

And Luke loves kittens, angry or not, so Julie’s cute by association.

So he keeps teasing. She never stops correcting him. It’s a delight to repay the favor. When she comes back to work after almost two months, he proudly shows her his pictures on the wall, two golden plates underneath them.

“Some say employee of the month, I say master of the beans,” he grins.

She huffs and walks away. Three days later, on a busy morning shift, she announces she’ll show him what a master of the beans looks like. But at the end of November, Nick’s photo gets framed on the wall.

They both know that the first day of December arrives with a clean slate in their game, with Christmas crowds to please, overtime and the best batch of vanilla crescents. Adding a sprinkle of cinnamon to the hot chocolate, Luke calls it an elf in a cup. Every time, Julie rolls her eyes to the sky. Every time this reaction hits him with a rush close to the kick of walking out on stage. It’s a performance by now, and good fun, and he tells himself he’ll be careful not to take it too far.

But then she laughs when he suggests Sunset Curve could play at the annual Christmas party.

Now it’s personal.

“Have you heard him sing? He can’t even reach the notes for All I Want For Christmas Is You,” she explains to Ms. Lessa, the laugh still lingering in her eyes as she hangs up fairy lights on the shelves.

Luke huffs. Julie’s not wrong, but it’s a low blow and on top of that, an awkward reminder of her walking in on him changing a few hours ago as he sang along to the radio.

So he shoots back, “Oh, like you can sing?”, fighting down the urge to stick his tongue out at her in front of their boss.

“Um yes I can,” Julie claims, “I played Gabriella in our HSM production in high school, and I was in the Los Feliz music program, just so you know.”

So, a musical kid. No wonder she couldn’t handle a little rock music at work.

“But can you play the guitar?” he asks, arms crossed as she still fumbles with the strings of light.

“A little.”

“Like what, Happy Birthday?”

Her stare flips him off without a word before she turns to Ms. Lessa. “I also play the piano.”

Rolling his eyes, he sends their boss what he hopes is a winning smile. “We have guitars, killer baselines and sick drums. We’re totally prepared to rock a Christmas party!”

Instead of agreeing with him, Ms. Lessa sighs and crosses her arms much like Julie a mere minute ago. Luke opens his mouth, the list of the clubs they played on the tip of his tongue. “Okay, enough, you two.”

He closes his mouth.

“Why don’t you both play? That way we can have both a guitar and Mariah Carey, hm?”

His jaw drops. Performing with Julie? Together?

No.

No way.

Their eyes lock. He recognizes the panic in her blushing cheeks, and the surprise in the way her eyes widen. Knows it, because he feels it too. He’d been teasing, nothing more. Teasing and trying to land his band a gig. He didn’t ask for more time with Julie, and especially not outside of this café. Outside of this safe space where the ringing bell by the door could interrupt any banter and the morning rushes force them into a dream team.

He wants to protest, back out, but not a word escapes his lips. The faint droning of the radio remains the only sound he hears.

Ms. Lessa nods. “Great, then. I’ll send you a mail with the details.” Like that, she leaves them behind the counter and disappears into her office in the back of the store.

“I hate you,” Julie mutters from behind him.

He turns around and puts on a smug grin that doesn’t belong to him. “Maybe wait with that till I showed you some real talent, Molina.”

An hour later, just as Nick changed into his uniform and breezes out of the door, Julie trots into the breakroom. She falls into the seat next to Luke, exhaling loudly before she gulps down half the content of her water bottle. When she slams it down on the table, she almost hits the plate of cookies that they can’t sell in the café. 

A smirk already tugging on his lips, Luke sends the last bite of the curry Reggie made for him down his throat. “I can’t believe you couldn’t just let me have that gig.”

She snorts, and the sound of it alone revives him more than his lunch break. “It’s a few Christmas songs at a work party, not your wannabe breakthrough. You need to calm down.”

“Are you really using Taylor Swift lyrics as a comeback now? Looks a lot like a tragedy now,” he teases, and for a second, he’s tempted to wink at her. But then he remembers Alex’ TED talk on romance and hints and leading others on, so he keeps both eyes wide open.

Julie flips him off either way, and he realizes she probably wouldn’t think he’s flirting with her in her dreams. “Shut up, Patterson.”

“Hmm…” he leans back in his chair, eyes gliding over the clock on the wall. Five more minutes before they have to head back into the coffee-scented madness.

He shakes his head. “Nah, I won’t.” His eyes dart back to her right when she stuffs one of the deformed sugar cookies into her mouth. “Because my point still stands. I deserved it. I’ve been master of the beans two months in a row, it’s only natural I’d get these bonus points.”

“Excuse me?” she huffs, sending crumbs flying all over the table, not that she seems to notice. “That was just because I bruised my arm and then got the flu! I was master of the beans four times last year, so way before you even knew how to foam milk, you baby bean.”

Raising an eyebrow, he rests his lower arms on the table to lean forward. Before a word hushes over his lips, she grimaces at him and angrily chews on another cookie.

Okay, so the kitten’s back. He can handle a kitten. “Sure, if that’s what you say. Can’t be because I covered _all_ your shifts when you were sick, or because we have a 15% increase in tips when I’m in.”

“That’s because you flirt with everyone who comes in here,” she snaps back, mirroring him.

This close to her face, he discovers the depth of her eyes for the first time. But wasn’t brown supposed to be a warm color?

“Don’t think I didn’t see you making eyes at the baby who spit all over the table last week,” Julie adds.

Under the intensity of her stare, he leans back. “I didn’t make eyes at the baby,” he mumbles. “I was trying to cheer them up.”

“Uh huh. That’s why they were crying so loudly when you cowered on the floor to clean up that vomit. I bet they just saw your face up close and couldn’t help but scream.”

“I said I tried, okay?” he sighs, glimpsing at the wall again. Just as the clock announces the end of their break, the perfect remark pops into his head, but not without the first taste of the dawning realization that he should ask Reggie on a crash course on flirting (or, how to not flirt. He wants to tease her, not make her uncomfortable by accidentally hitting on her.)

For now, he flashes her a grin anyway. “It’s not my fault they couldn’t cope with my charming smile.”

Another snort. She jumps up to her feet, turning away her face so quickly he barely understands how she groans, “Ya no puedo soportarlo” into her half-open hair.

Not for the first time, he regrets taking French instead of Spanish in school.

“What was that?” he asks, trailing behind her once his lunchbox glides into his backpack.

She walks out of the door without looking back. “Mind your business, Luke.”

“I would, but it’s not nice to insult your coworkers in Spanish. Or, any language, really.”

Julie whirls around, arms on her hips. “I’m not insulting you.” Her voice pitches higher, and it only takes him a confused blink of an eye before he remembers when he heard that happen before. A customer had insulted Nick because of his painted nails, and Julie smiled at him before she declared that they’d unfortunately just ran out of almond milk. In the end, that man had left without placing an order and as soon as the door fell shut behind him, Julie grabbed another milk carton from the storage room.

Back then, he thought it was sweet. Now he just snorts. “Really, Molina? So _boludo_ isn’t an insult? You know, I asked Elena at the book club meeting last week, and she told me quite the opposite. I’m gonna be honest with you, I was a bit disappointed. I kinda thought you were finally giving me a cute nickname so I didn’t have to be jealous of _Nicky-poo_.”

She blinks at him. Opens her mouth. Closes it. Blushes. His grin deepens without his consent. In the end, she silently storms off to the bathroom to wash her hands. She doesn’t look him in the eyes for the rest of her shift.

When he opens the studio door for her, the rain drips down her hair like it’s riding down a waterslide. Even though the sky was a bright baby blue ten minutes ago, she’s standing in front of him soaking wet, goosebumps hurrying past the sleeve of her t-shirt.

He wants to greet her, ask if she found here okay, but instead he blurts out, “Do you want a jacket?”

“What?”

Luke bites his lip and hopes she doesn’t see the nervous flush on his face as she hesitantly slips past him through the door. Inside, she turns back around to face him.

“I was, um… I mean, are you cold? You seem cold. And you can’t sing if you catch a cold, which would mean no Mariah Carey, so…” he forces a breath down his lungs in a quick pause, “a jacket.” His hand motions toward the couch where his flannel jacket rests right where he tossed it this morning.

For a moment she looks back and forth between him and the couch, and he’s sure she’ll storm right out with an eyeroll until the expression on her face softens. “Um, thanks, Luke.”

“Sure.”

As he looks at her drowning in the flannel fabric, he feels like an invisible force abuses his stomach as a punching bag. But he can’t afford to get sick till the new year, so he shakes the feeling out of his head, smirks at her and says, “Now show me what you got.”

Her fingers brushing over the keys of Reggie’s keyboard, Julie glances up at him. “Don’t you want to warm up first?”

His voice has been warmed up since 9 in the morning. “Already did,” he shrugs.

“And what about the setlist?”

He falls on the couch, right next to his guitar. It takes all his willpower to keep his leg from bouncing in anticipation – he spent the last few days trying to imagine what her voice sounds like, her range, if it would be in harmony with his own… and he’s never been a patient musician anyway.

“Can’t pick the right songs when I don’t know your range. Are you sure you know how this whole thing works? I can ask Alex to sing Mariah Carey. He could even do the little dance.”

Chuckling, she sits down in front of the keyboard. With her eyes on his and an unfolding grin on her face, she lets her fingertips glide down the sleeve of his jacket. “You know, I’m actually impressed that you own anything that has sleeves.”

…

He’s probably making his confused puppy face. Or at least he thinks he’s doing it. If Alex was here, he’d tell him if he did. Probably roll his eyes, too, and tell him to stop – though at least the latter part sounds like something Julie could handle. 

What should he even make of that question?

“What?” he eventually stammers, “Why?” _Why aren’t you just singing?_

“Oh, so you don’t know?”

“Don’t know what?”

In his eager desperation, he doesn’t notice how her grin deepens. “How the whole café thinks you’re allergic to sleeves outside of our work uniforms?”

_Reggie_.

“So much for not embarrassing me in front of my co-workers,” he grumbles through his teeth the same moment he swears to himself he won’t get his traitor best friend any hugs in a cup this month anymore. (A promise that’ll crumble under Reggie’s puppy eyes, anyway.)

“What was that?” Julie asks. When his head shoots up, he finds her hands resting on the keys, finally.

He sighs and lets it go. “All I want for Christmas is for you to finally play that song, Molina.”

A laugh pearls over her lips, and she throws her head back just a little bit. “Guess Christmas will come early for you this year, then.”

The moment the first note echoes through the garage he regrets ever suggesting he’d show her real talent.

Because screw his talent. Screw anything that’s not her voice and the keyboard and the warm wildfire where her music touches his soul.

Listening to her, he’s frozen on his seat.

Listening to her, he falls in love with music all over again.

When the last note fades out, his eyes don’t leave her. Her hands settle on his lap and she crunches her nose, avoiding his gaze. His stare.

“What do you think?” she asks in a seriousness that’d take his breath away if it wasn’t already long gone.

“Is there anything you can’t do?” he replies in awe.

A frown hushes over her forehead, then she breathes out in a whispered laugh, “Latte art.”

Luke snorts. “Who cares about latte art anyway. You are crazy talented, Julie! You’re gonna be big someday.”

The look she gives him tells him he wasn’t convincing enough. “Oh really?”

“ _Duh_. If anyone ever has a shred of doubt about your talent, I will fight them myself.”

Crossing her arms, she raises an eyebrow at him and smirks. “Didn’t you doubt my talent yourself, like, two days ago?”

Even from a safe distance, the playful twinkle in her eyes seems too strong of an invitation to a dangerous game. He ducks away and rubs his neck. “Well, I’ll fight them _after_ they heard you sing.”

She smiles at him, and there it is again, this punch in the stomach, along with a flaming fire in his cheeks. He wonders if he’s working up a fever. But in sixth grade, when he caught the flu, his parents only ever checked his forehead temperature, never his cheeks. And there’s no dry tickle in his throat, no itching in his nose.

Then he feels the smile on his face, stuck there without his permission. It’s a brand-new feeling, and it doesn’t make any sense. Except…

Oh.

Is this what romantic attraction feels like?

_Oh shit_.

The bag with his jacket bounces against her leg as she walks into the café. At the sound of the bell, Luke’s head shoots up from the register and a bright smile flashes up like a lantern at dawn.

She almost stops in her tracks in the doorframe. That smile is new.

Or maybe just her interpretation is.

Before their rehearsal, the sight of him sent a rush of annoyance down to the pit of her stomach. The twitch of the corner of his mouth pulled her eyes in a roll toward the sky, and his humming gave her the wildest fantasies of giving him a coffee shower till he shut up.

Today, the only thought flickering in her mind is the thrill in his voice when he talked about harmonies and guitar riffs. How he softened like butter in the L.A. sun as soon as he held a guitar in his hands and heard her sing, and the soft smile he gave her, the same smile that haunts her ever since.

That Luke in the studio was endlessly nicer and cuter than café Luke, and the realization brings along a flutter in her chest. It storms in from uncharted territory, from a different place than the tingling irritation she’s come to know so well around him.

She’s not sure if she wants to follow it into the unknown.

With a silent nod at Luke, she walks past the queue, eyes darting back and forth between him and the “Staff only” sign on the door next to the counter. Out of nowhere, he’s right next to it, his elbow extended to her in a greeting. She bumps hers against it, trying hard to mask her surprise.

There’s a good chance she fails.

“Hey, you usually drink a coffee when you come in, right?” he asks quietly as he turns back around to pump white mocha and a flavor shot into a new pitcher.

So he noticed her little ritual at the beginning of each shift, okay. No big deal. (It feels like a big deal.) “Uh, a latte, actually. Where’s Nick?”

A little smile. “Storage room. Lessa’s in the office with the new shift plan, so, you know, don’t talk to her till she’s done.”

“Okay, thanks.” Her fingers fumble with the old plastic bag in her hands, while her mind feels like she slurped down a tall Frappuccino in three minutes. So before she does something stupid like smile back at him or ask if he’ll sing again today, she turns to the door and quickly adds, “See you in a minute, then.”

When she looks over her shoulder, he shovels ice into the pitcher with a gentle curve on his lips, as if this whole conversation happened ever before. As if it happened every day. No teasing, no smirks, no eyerolls.

Pushing the door open, Julie wonders if café Luke can be just as cute as studio Luke, and if this peace could possibly last. Deep down in a tiny jump of her heart, she hopes so.

Walking around the corner, Julie catches a glimpse at Nick as he cowers in front of the little wheel-cart that’s stacked with milk cartons, new cups, lids and countless bags of chocolate chips and tiny marshmallows.

She leans against the doorframe and watches him for half a minute, until the pity in her chest becomes too much.

“Hey, Nick, I can take care of that if you want to go home.”

His fluffy hair falls right into his eyes as he whirls around. “Julie! Oh thank god you’re here, I feel _so_ dead inside.”

She frowns. “How long have you been in here?”

Nick flinches. “An hour? There’s still an entire package of Christmas straws and cups by the backdoor that we have to fit in here.” Glancing around the packed shelves, he sighs. The entire space is crammed with boxes and plastic containers, and if Julie hadn’t worked here throughout two Decembers already, she’d never believe any of the Christmas stuff could fit inside.

But she’s Julie, master of the beans, and she earned her first title for her shelving skills.

“Don’t worry about it, okay? I got this.”

“Are you trying to collect bonus points again?” he grins in relief, jumping back up on his feet.

A laugh slips over her lips in the same moment she playfully shoves his shoulder. “Pff, no, you know me, I’d never do that.”

“Course not.”

Their grins haven’t died down yet when she remembers she hasn’t seen him since the weekend. “Hey, how was Frozen on Ice? Did your sister get to hug Olaf?”

“No, but Olaf got to hug my sister. Or at least that’s her take on the story,” he chuckles while they walk to the break room together. Holding the door open for her, he bows and waves for her to go in first.

Julie curtsies and fights the giggle tickling her throat. “Thanks, Your Highnes-tea.”

A light groan rumbles over his lips. “You’ll never let me live that down, will you?”

“Nope. But tell your sister she’s a genius for that name, and I might cover your shift before your psych final,” she replies and quickly places the bag in front of Luke’s locker when Nick opens his own. Just as he wiggles out of his shirt, she turns around and changes into her work uniform before her eyes catch a glimpse at the scars on his chest.

“You don’t have to,” he replies, “Luke already said he’ll cover it. He even quizzed me after the morning rush today. I think I actually conditioned myself to think of Pavlov whenever I pump flavor shots now.”

With her head stuck between the fabric, she freezes. “Really?”

“Yeah, it really helped. Ah, damn, that’s my papa calling, gotta go. See you tomorrow!”

The door slams shut before she can mumble back a goodbye. In the silence Nick leaves behind she wonders – not for the first time – if she got Luke all wrong that first day.

There’s a steaming hot latte behind the register, in the chipped cup she likes best. She’s about to ask if he forgot to hand it out or if the customer walked away – the question lingers on the tip of her tongue – but then she sees the foamed music note and the words die on her lips. Her heart skips a beat.

“Is that for me?” she croaks, her throat dry like the summer heat. Gaping at the drink, she doesn’t notice the smile uncurling on Luke’s face.

What she does notice, however, is the wink he sends her when their eyes meet, along with the tiniest nod.

“I, uh… thanks, Luke. Um… I’ll go finish stocking up,” she stammers, stumbling backwards through the door.

“Julie?”

His gaze pulls her a step forward again. “Yeah?”

“Don’t you wanna take your coffee with you?”

Her cheeks heat up in a red flush. “Right.” 

His eyes hurry over the screen for a second, third, fourth time. He didn’t talk about Julie all the time, no way. Maybe he sometimes mentioned a particularly funny quip she made about a rude customer, or a new drink idea she scribbled down on the notepad in the breakroom and that he hastily tried after she left. And occasionally, he complained about her, when she turned the music down or switched shifts so he had to work with Carrie instead.

He didn’t talk about her all the time. Or a lot. He talked about her as much as Reggie and Alex talked about their co-workers… of which he didn’t remember any name.

Okay, so he talked about Julie. And he did lose sleep over her voice.

So what if he liked her?

Luke shakes his head. _No_.

He likes her voice. Not her. That flicker of doubt in the studio wouldn’t be enough for him to take down his Pride button, or to start thinking about dates and wedding rings, or whatever alloromantic people usually dreamed about. It was just that, a flicker of doubt, and with a determined nod, he tosses it into the pitcher with the strawberries and vanilla shot and watches it crumble in the blender.

Except he jumps back a second too early. That doubt makes it out alive because his eyes dart to the side and find her next to him, the empty mug in her hands.

Given the look in her eyes, she counted seconds, too.

She doesn’t call him out on it, though. Instead she quietly says, “I just wanted to put this in the dishwasher,” and glances down at her hands.

He moves out of the way on sheer autopilot, as his mind runs off to go on a date with her and sets the scene too easily. Waves hitting the shore in a sharp contrast to the quick brush of their hands. The sound of their laughter drowning in the ocean melody. His jacket on her shoulder, and her chapstick on his mouth. 

In the blink of an eye, he’s back in the café. Both the phone in his pocket and his cheeks feel like they’re burning up now. 

_Fuck_.

Spread out on Nick’s couch in between half-empty snack bowls and empty soda cans, Luke’s voice still plays on repeat in her head. It hasn’t paused since rehearsal, not while Flynn called her as she rode her bike to Nick’s house, and not while the movie began to play on the huge screen on the wall. She could try and deny it (at least in front of Nick), but his echo still sends goosebumps down her body.

There’s just something about his raspy riffs for _Winter Wonderland_ that rips right through her core.

If it wasn’t for _The Good Place_ , she might have asked Nick to postpone their Netflix night. Then she could have stayed in the studio and listened to Luke for the rest of the evening. She could’ve watched him play, and wondered what his callouses felt like on the back of her hand, and maybe they could’ve written a full song together, and not just a bridge for one of his songs.

She could’ve rested her head on his shoulder now, instead of Nick’s.

The thought hits her like a 5am alarm.

Sitting up straight, Julie frowns it away, tries to find the cancel button in her own mind. Turns to Nick, who’s laughing at Jason right now. “Didn’t you say you wanted to paint your nails again?”

He tears his eyes away from the screen to smile at her. “Yeah, totally! Do you wanna pick a color for me?”

Nodding too enthusiastically, she reaches for the small bag on the table that he motions at. Flynn hand sewed it for his birthday last year, in glorious pastel blue, pink and white stripes, and at her request Julie added some of the doodles he had admired on her sneakers and backpack.

Maybe doodling could take her mind off Luke. Or she could draw his guitar, and the note he left in her latte foam…

She shakes her head at herself. “Focus,” she mumbles through her teeth, then rummages through the bag. Yellow, blue, pink, green… none of it seems right. She picked all of these colors too many times before, and they’re fine, she wore half of them too before she started learning the guitar and the splinters drizzled to the ground like dyed snowflakes. They’re fine, but not new.

Out of the corner of her eyes, a hint of ocean turquoise catches her breath.

“Oh, I haven’t seen this one before!” she gasps, “It’s gorgeous… What do you think?”

He looks over at her, and their arms brush for a second. A smile hushes over his face, and she tries not to search for Luke’s dimples there, because she knows she won’t find them, and she knows it’s a dangerous road to follow.

“Yeah, it absolutely is,” Nick replies. “I think Luke got that one for me.”

The bottle drops into her lap.

Frozen, Julie can’t help but stare at it. She has no idea when the thought of him turned into this labyrinth she can’t escape. Just when she catches a glimpse at the exit, the next corner pulls her back in, down mysterious paths and riddled road signs as her heart skips along each steppingstone.

Next to her, Nick sighs. “Look, you’re not really subtle about the fact that you don’t like him, but he’s nice, Julie. He really is. I know your first shift together wasn’t great, and that you miss your mom a lot, but maybe your first impression of him was a bit… tainted by that.”

A dry laugh escapes her lips. “You know, we’re actually playing at the Christmas party together. It was Lessa’s idea.” She grimaces at the memory. “Or more like an order.”

He bursts into laughter so violently that his shoulders bump against hers. “And how’s that going for you?”

“It’s…” she pauses, searching for the right words as they run out of her reach. Her mind wanders back to his studio a few hours ago, the pizza he ordered for them, and the laughs they shared over grease-stained napkins and the crumbles of the crust on the floor. The setlist they didn’t argue over, and the soft glimmer in his eyes when he asked for her help with _Bright_. 

She clears her throat. “It’s going good. I think we might be on the same wavelength, actually. Um, musically, I mean.”

The twitch of his eyebrows forces a flush on her face.

“Oh shut up,” she groans, throwing her head back against the cushion. “I know I should’ve given him the benefit of the doubt. Now do you want me to paint your nails or not?”

He does, and for the rest of the night, they don’t talk about Luke anymore. But when she slips under her blanket that night, he waits in the corners of her mind and she doesn’t kick him out.

**__ **

Two weeks before Christmas, Julie walks into the breakroom to find a bundle of clothes with her name on it on the table. Sighing, she rolls her head back and glares at the ceiling as if it could lift her out of her misery.

It’s time for the Christmas uniforms.

She hates the Christmas uniforms.

Every year she hopes that Ms. Lessa comes to her senses, and every year, without fail, that hope chokes to death in the red-and-green dress that looks like Julie swapped her clothes with an elf. The golden ornaments on the white apron never distract from the coffee colored stains for long, and the Christmas cap bounces at the slightest movement of her head. It bounces and annoys her and it’s not worth the extra tips, but getting rid of it seems to be almost worth losing the master of the beans title.

She forces a deep breath down her lungs.

It’s just a uniform, and just for two weeks. She dealt with this before, she can deal with it again. She’ll be fine, as long as she doesn’t have to wear striped tights again and as long as Luke doesn’t find a way to pull this look off.

She’ll be fine.

He walks in with the confidence of a worn-out rockstar after an endless night. His hands straighten out the red collar over the green shirt, and the bulge of his bicep should not jump into her line of sight like this, not during work hours, or ever. It’s an elf costume, she reminds herself. A cheap gimmick for the customers.

But he pulls it off. Of course.

She’s not fine.

Luke doesn’t seem to notice her heated stare, though. Instead, he greets Nick with an elbow bump and takes over the register as if the sleeve of his shirt didn’t cling to the curves of his arm muscles right in front of her.

Cursing under her breath, Julie stacks more cookies into the snack display. When he finally calls out her name, she tries to ignore the force of his gaze on her, and nods a silent Hello into his general direction. No matter how many times she reminds herself it’s just a costume, she can’t look at him when he’s a Hallmark movie’s wildest dream and she feels like a cheap Mall elf.

As Luke takes his first order, the sudden death of his smile lingers in his voice.

A sting in her chest, Julie glimpses over her shoulder to the register. Nick frowns at her. Her head snaps back to the display. Of course he frowns. She wants to frown at herself, too. This resentment is neither reasonable nor healthy, and the pull in her stomach knows that as well as the rational whispers in her head. It’s not Luke’s fault he makes for a very cute elf, or that customers drink straight out of the palm of his hand.

Not that she’d admit any of this out loud.

“Good luck with studying,” she half-shouts after Nick instead, and counts and recounts banana bread slices and chocolate chips on every cookie until he walks out of the door three minutes later.

At least now she can embarrass herself in front of Luke without Nick watching.

“So, just you and me, huh,” Luke smirks when he grabs a tray out of the shelf right next to her.

Huffing, she glances at the order on the receipt in his hands and places two chocolate chip cookies on an empty plate. “You forgot the customers,” she mutters and dodges out of his way before he comes too close to her with the steaming coffee cup or this flawless smile on his lips.

“They’re not elves, they don’t count,” he replies more cautiously and adds in barely a whisper, “Everything okay?”

Her heart skips a beat, then makes up for lost time by jumping against her ribcage.

“Yeah, sure,” she says and meets his gaze, hoping he buys the forced curve on her lips like his favorite drink after a busy shift. (Tall cappuccino with a vanilla shot and one scoop of chocolate chips. He calls it a “chocolate coffee melt-ley”, and the pun makes her laugh and wince in pain at the same time.)

Looking at him turns out to be a mistake.

A huge, mindless mistake.

Waves of worry pull her into this hazel sea, and although she knows that grey is a cool color, she burns up under his warm gaze. She’s never been so grateful for the shrill beep of the coffee machine, announcing the finished drink. Tearing away, her eyes skim over the order one more time.

“Double espresso for Matteo,” she shouts over the counter.

“I got this,” Luke insists just loud enough for her to hear. Snatching the cup right underneath her fingertips, he turns to the counter and grins at the cute guy in front of him. “That’s a beautiful name,” he declares in what is definitely not his usual customer voice. “Is that Italian?”

Biting back a groan, Julie flees to the storage room and hides there until the frustrated blush on her cheeks fades into the dark.

A few minutes later, when her breathing calmed down, she pushes the door next to the counter back open with her elbow. Her hands cling tightly to the wrapped stacks of red napkins pressed against her chest, as if they could protect her. From what, she’s not sure. Coffee stains? Luke’s smile? His hand brushing against her in passing?

To her surprise, the line is gone and Luke stands all alone by the counter now. Wiping down the surfaces, he hums along to the old Taylor Swift song on the radio. At the sound of his voice, the Grinch mood inside her crumbles like ice cubes in the blender.

His eyes dart to her, and he immediately stands straight up and beams at her as if she just brought in a Christmas tree and gifts, and not just the first thing she grabbed from the shelves. “New napkins, great,” he grins, then nods to the cup next to the coffee machine. “Um, this is for you.”

She follows his head movement. Blinks. Blinks again, as if the hug in a cup might disappear if she looks too closely.

“We’re not allowed to make ourselves drinks for more than 4$,” she says slowly.

Rubbing his neck, Luke pulls a receipt out of his pocket. “I paid for it, see?”

“Why?” she croaks. He looks at her like she’s a Christmas light in the winter dark, and not even the darkest corner of her mind believes that he looks at customers like that too.

“You don’t seem to be having a great day, so… hug in a cup, right? Lessa said it’s time for your break anyway.”

Julie has no idea how her voice carries her through the outburst of… whatever feeling spreads through her entire body like a fever now. “Thanks, Luke, I… that’s really sweet of you. I mean it.”

He shakes his head, one corner of his mouth twitching. “That’s nothing, really.”

Except she knows better. It’s not nothing.

It’s the start of everything.

Luke likes to think it was the hug in a cup that put her in a better mood. It might’ve been the break too – sometimes sitting alone in a silent room for half an hour saved his sanity here, and why shouldn’t it be the same for Julie? If he thinks about it – if he listens to the voice in his head that sounds too much like Alex – he knows the break is most likely the reason for her gentle smile when she walks back in.

But he kinda hopes it was the hug in a cup.

She doesn’t mention it for the rest of the day, though, and so they shift into a quiet but stable work rhythm. He takes the orders. She works the coffee machine and blenders. He hands the orders to the customers. She keeps the snack display filled. He stocks up straws and napkins and the little sugar sachets Reggie likes to pour straight down his throat. She leans on his shoulder.

That’s never been part of any routine before.

He’s just catching a breath after the rush hour crowd ran through, eyes wandering around the empty café as he thinks about Reggie’s cupcakes that wait for him at home, and suddenly, her head rests on his shoulder.

He’s not gonna have to get himself any more coffee today.

“I’m so tired,” she sighs half into his shirt. “Lessa put me on too many morning shifts, I really need to catch up on some sleep… can we skip rehearsal tomorrow morning?”

Her words breeze right through his brain. He hears her talking, hears the words tired and sleep and rehearsal. But they don’t click, because her head fits perfectly into the curve of his neck and she’s warm and he needs to find out if her skin is as soft as it looks like from the corner of his eyes. He wonders if he’s allo or grey and how to ask her on a date. He wonders if it’s inappropriate to write a song about her already, and if she’d sing it as a duet with him. He wonders if he ever gets the same heart eyes around her that Alex and Reggie have been teasing him about at home.

He doesn’t wonder if these feelings are real, anymore.

“We practiced enough for the party, right?” Julie wants to know in a soft murmur. Her eyes are closed, and he can hear the peaceful and deep breaths she releases.

His throat runs dry.

Here she is, asking him about rehearsals and the Christmas party and all he thinks about is her pressed against his side. Here she is, seven hours into her shift, in a dress that shouldn’t look good on anyone, in braids messy from the Christmas cap, and yet he never wanted to memorize a view this badly before. She could ask him to leave this café right here, right now, and he’d blindly follow her.

Here she is, asking questions as if he knew any words to use as an answer.

“Hmm,” he chokes out.

Like that, she’s out of his reach.

“Sorry, oh my god, I was just… I didn’t… I’m sorry. Um. You know what, I’ll start cleaning the tables. Can you start the dishwasher? Great.” Her gaze avoids him. _She_ avoids him, turning her back to him as she hurries away and towards the supply closet.

His hand around her wrist stops him. Her huge dark eyes remind him of Bambi, and for a second Luke isn’t sure he can resist the urge to pull her into a hug.

He clears his throat.

“Or you sit down for a minute while I wipe the tables. We still have half an hour before we have to start cleaning everything.”

“You’re just saying that to get the master of the beans,” she says, but she sounds like she doesn’t believe herself.

“No, I’m saying that because you work really hard, and you deserve to take a break, Jules. Okay?”

The delicate smile on her lips feels like an early Christmas gift. “Okay.”

When Julie leaves the stage with Luke by her side, everyone in the café cheers and claps louder than her dad at her high school rehearsals. Luke pulls her into a hug, and Nick is right there with two cups of celebratory punch. No matter where she looks, her co-workers and the colleagues from the Pasadena store are beaming at her. Even Carrie sends her a genuine smile as she nods at her from the counter-turned-bar. Lessa drowns them in compliments and “infinite bonus points” as she puts it, to which Luke mumbles a joke about inflation into Julie’s ear.

Yet, two hours later, she’s ready to sneak away from the party, or at least hide in the storage room for the rest of the night.

She flops into one of the chairs shoved against the walls, her fingers quickly unlocking the screen of her phone. 8pm. Too early to leave, too late to drown her frustration in a latte. Sighing, she shoves her phone back into the pocket of her jeans.

She can’t compete with Luke’s foam art anyway.

“Hey, you okay?”

Her head shoots up to find Nick standing in front of her, shielding her from the provisional dance floor. A frown is stuck all over his forehead, and he’s rubbing his arm like the day he came out to her.

When another sighs slips out of her moth, he sits down next to her.

“I don’t know,” she mumbles, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “I mean… no offense, but boys are stupid.”

To her surprise, Nick chuckles. “Boys in general, or one in particular?”

She doesn’t need to look at him to know where his eyes stray to. Or who.

“I just thought we got along better, you know? I was having fun. I like him, Nick. But he’s not even looking at me right now.”

For a moment, he lets his gaze wander through the room, and she’s afraid she said too much, but then he replies, “Not when you’re looking, no.”

Huffing, she empties her glass of punch. _Not at all_ , she thinks but bites her tongue. “Anyway, how did your finals go?” she asks with what she hopes sounds like genuine interest.

Nick shakes his head at her like Flynn whenever she’s particularly unimpressed with one of Julie’s excuses. “Julie, we talked about my finals yesterday. They went good, so why don’t you just go to him and talk? Have some fun before you go back to the bean battle tomorrow.”

She wants to burn the sight of his wiggling eyebrows out of her memory. “I’m having a lot of fun. The most fun, in fact,” she grumbles but stands up anyway.

Nick only laughs at her before he gives her a gentle shove and an unconvincing thumbs-up.

Under the disco ball lights, his messy hair flashes into view in the corner of her eyes. He’s standing alone, far away from all the girls she watched him talk to just half an hour ago. The glass in his hand seems empty.

So she’s not interrupting any flirting. _Good_.

Heart beating faster to the rhythm of the Spotify Christmas playlist, she squeezes past some of the Pasadena employees. She mumbles a quick apology, but no one pays any attention to her.

Maybe she should’ve gotten a second glass of punch before looking for him.

Or at him.

His hair is still sweaty from the performance and clings to his forehead. Her hand’s been itching with the urge to brush one of these strands to the side ever since they left the stage, no matter how many times she tells herself it’s inappropriate. And his arms… she really wants to touch the curves of his arms, glide her fingertips along the muscles and imagine sketching them down on paper in the safety of her room.

Julie shakes her head. She shouldn’t talk to him when her mind runs wild like this. She should turn around, leave him alone and…

Her feet stop right next to him.

He doesn’t notice her.

His eyes stare into the distance, maybe at one of the paper stars dangling from the wall on the other side of the café. With his hands shoved into his pockets, he shifts back and forth on his feet in rhythm to the music. There’s no smile on his face, just a straight line.

The quick rush of courage Nick talked into her sinks to the ground along with her smile.

Suddenly, he shivers and almost jumps back into focus.

“Julie!” he shouts in surprise and the smile spreading over his lips is a bit too wide, a bit too loopy and frankly, a bit too genuine for her to handle.

“Are you drunk?” she blurts out, only to clasp her hands in front of her mouth.

He laughs and leans in closer to her. She can smell the fruity alcohol in his breath and weirdly enough, she doesn’t mind. “Tipsy. I’ve had two cups of punch. No, wait, three,” he admits, counting along with his fingers, “But I stopped drinking an hour ago.”

Another smile, another breath lost in her lungs.

“Okay,” she replies quietly, then falls silent. Why didn’t she think of a conversation topic before his puppy eyes swept every clear thought out of her head?

It doesn’t help that he’s staring at her now like she’s the star to his Christmas tree. He shouldn’t be allowed to look at her like this when he’s not going to kiss her afterwards. And he’s not going to kiss her, no way, not after he ignored her for two hours.

Nudging her shoulder, he pulls her out of her grim headspace and into the sparkle of his dark eyes. “You know, I get terribly cuddly when I’m tipsy.”

He doesn’t give her any further explanation, even when she waits one moment and a second and a third. When she shrugs at him in confusion, the smile on his lips widens.

_Oh_.

He wants to cuddle. With her. And if Julie is honest with herself, being wrapped in those arms sounds as good as kissing him.

But she can’t let him know that, not yet, so she snorts. “Really? You ignored me so hard I thought you hated me again till like, a minute ago and now you wanna cuddle?”

“Please?” he asks and the puppy eyes he gives her very nearly kill her.

“Ugh, fine,” she groans in reply, incapable of keeping a smile off her face. When she grabs his wrist, he blinks at her, mouth hanging open. “Follow me,” she says, and doesn’t wait for an answer.

“Really, Jules? The supply closet?”

She locks the door behind them and whirls around to him, the image of his grin flashing through her mind even in the darkness. “Do you want to explain to Lessa what we’re doing? Or worse, have Carrie interrogate you?”

“Fair point,” he mumbles.

The smell of the disinfectant mixed with his perfume lingers in her nose as Julie presses her hand against her thigh, unsure what to say. What to do, too, now that they’re alone in a dark room and standing so close she can feel the heat radiating from his skin. Maybe she should’ve dragged him to the storage room and the little more space it offered… but then again, they couldn’t possibly hide there for long before someone interrupted them in search for napkins or cups.

No, the supply closet has to do.

“So what kinda cuddles did you have in mind?” she whispers, fumbling with a string of her curls. Her elbow brushes against his arm.

Instead of an answer, Luke wraps his arms around her and pulls her against him, his face quickly buried in the curve of her neck. As he sighs in content, his grip around her tightens.

“Oh okay,” she shrieks, but with her next breath, she closes her eyes and relaxes.

His hold on her is strong but not suffocating, and through his thin sleeveless shirt, the warmth of his body hits her with full force while his scent dances through her nose. Slowly, she rests her cheek on his chest and her hands on his back.

His lips almost brush over the skin that’s not hidden by her dress.

Almost.

She could stay like this for the rest of the night.

When the next song starts to blare in the distance, he lifts his head just enough to whisper into her ear, “I really loved singing with you, Jules. You have the voice of an angel, for real, you’re, like, master of the beans and the stage. I don’t think there’s anything you can’t do.”

She prays he doesn’t notice the goosebumps his husky voice gives her almost as much as she knows he holds her too close for that to pass him by.

“Thanks,” she whispers back. “You weren’t so bad yourself.”

His fingers brush over her cheek. There’s no way he doesn’t notice her shiver – she hears his smile in the breath he releases. “Can I kiss you, Jules? I really want to kiss you.”

Is he tipsy? Or drunk? Is _she_ drunk? She feels drunk, if not on the punch, then on his words, on his touch. On the taste of his lips when she pulls him in and their noses bump against each other.

He kisses her so much softer than she expected to. His hands still cup her cheek, his thumb gently stroking over her skin, while his fingertips begin to draw tiny circles on her nape.

In return, she buries her hands in his hair.

Her back pressed against the door. His mouth on her neck, then back on her lips. Her legs around his waist. His hands on her thighs, and at least one hickey under the collar of her dress.

Behind the door, Mariah Carey’s voice begins to belt through the air.

With a grin too wide for her face, she breaks away from Luke to rest her head against the cool wood of the door. “Is that gonna be our song now?” she asks, taking a deep breath.

“Maybe. But I could also write you one, if you want.”

“Maybe,” she smiles and lets her fingers run over his cheek.

One more kiss, then he rests his forehead against hers. “Julie?”

Before she can answer, Luke covers her neck in more kisses. Her eyes flutter shut.

“Hm?”

“I never hated you,” he whispers against her skin. “You’re too amazing for that.”


End file.
